Written by Adam Taylor
28 September, 2012
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Editor’s note: This is Part 6 (see Part 5) of an extensive report by 9/11 researcher Adam Taylor that exposes the fallacies and flaws in the arguments made by the editors of Popular Mechanics (PM) in the latest edition of Debunking 9/11 Myths. We encourage you to submit your own reviews of the book at Amazon.com and other places where it is sold.

The final section of PM’s chapter on the Twin Towers addresses a theory that is not widely believed among members of the 9/11 Truth movement: that large seismic spikes indicative of explosions occurred before the Towers collapsed. As PM explains:

Seismographs pick up readings from large events like earthquakes, but according to seismologists, explosions from a controlled demolition would not register

On www.whatreallyhappened.com, the Web site references a graph showing the readings over a 30-minute span. Measured over such a long time period, the collapses do appear as sudden, momentary spikes. But when shown on a more detailed graph covering a 40-second span, it is clear there was sustained seismic activity for the duration of the collapses. (pg. 62)

PM’s assessment corroborates the findings of the Lamont-Boherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.[i] However, the point that there was not just one sudden seismic spike at Ground Zero has been noted by other supporters of the 9/11 Truth movement as well.[ii]

In refuting a claim made by very few members of the movement, PM also refutes an argument that several other defenders of the official 9/11 story have made: that any explosives used on 9/11 would have been detected by seismographs. As PM writes (quoting seismologist Arthur Lerner-Lam):

“Demolitions are typically very small explosions,” Lerner-Lam says. “And, you wouldn’t record them anyway because they’d typically be aboveground, and too small to observe.” (pg. 63)

This admission in PM’s book is noteworthy, as several “debunkers” have in fact argued that the absence of seismic spikes indicates that the Towers were not demolished with explosives.

On Friday, Patrick Clawson, the director of research at the pro-Israel think-tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, suggested [1] that the US should work covertly and through international means of force to provoke Iran to take the first shot against the US or Israel. Otherwise, he says, starting a war with Iran will be really hard to accomplish.

“Crisis initiation,” he calls it. It’s very hard to do. And therefore “it’s very hard for me to see how the United States President can get us to war with Iran.”

Clawson recites a number of past incidents in history that presidential administrations have been able to use to justify going to war: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin, the explosion of the USS Maine, the attack on Fort Sumter…

Finally, he advises: “If the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war.”

I don’t think this reveals some evil conspiracy theory, but it does reveal how many hawks in Washington think about foreign policy. As Reza Sanati, a research fellow at the Middle East Studies Center, explained [2] in the National Interest last week:

In the narrative of regime change, the American rationale is not difficult to understand. According to this scenario, Washington would keep pressure on the EU to cut off its oil exports from Iran, place extraterritorial sanctions on Iran’s banking infrastructure that impede international business and put massive pressure on Iran’s existing trade partners. Subsequent damage to the Islamic Republic’s revenues and thus the average Iranian’s quality of life would put intolerable strain upon the regime.

The Iranian government would either cave into U.S. demands, be overthrown by popular uprising or lash out militarily – a move that would legitimize [3] American aggression against Iran. Thus, with this approach, Washington feels that it has Tehran boxed in. Even if Iran capitulates, the United States may not remove any of the sanctions; it could string out relief by claiming human-rights abuses or support for terrorism. If sanctions lead to street demonstrations, the United States may entertain what Vali Nasr has referred to as the Libya scenario [4]: “economic pressure causing political unrest that invites intervention by foreign powers that feel safe enough to interfere in the affairs of a non-nuclear-armed state.” Moreover, as many U.S. hawks have suggested, it would be preferable [5] for Iran’s government, under economic pressure, to lash out at the American behemoth in a rash, uncalculated way, therefore providing a casus belli that puts the United States in a sympathetic light.

The Obama administration does seem to have [6] ruled out [7] an attack on Iran (for a nuclear weapons program it doesn’t have [8]) at least for now, partly because so many [9] in official Washington oppose it [10]. But long term, this is how policymakers think in the Imperial City.

Pravda.Ru interviewed Paul Craig Roberts, an American economist, who served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and became a co-founder of Reaganomics – the economic policies promoted by the U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. We asked Mr. Roberts to share his views about the current state of affairs inside and outside the United States.

Pravda.Ru: Mr. Roberts, you are known in Russia as the creator of Reaganomics, which helped the country overcome stagflation. What were the key aspects of that policy and how would you estimate its results today? Do you think your faith in free market has shattered?

Paul Craig Roberts: Free market means the freedom of price to adjust to supply and demand. It does not mean the absence of regulation of human behavior.

Reaganomics was a political word for supply-side economics, a new development in economic theory. In the post World War 2 western world, governments used Keynesian demand management economic policy to control inflation and to boost employment. John Maynard Keynes was the British economist who explained the Great Depression in the West as a consequence of insufficient aggregate demand to maintain full employment and stable prices.

Keynesian demand management relied on government budget deficits and easy monetary policy (money creation) to stimulate demand for goods and services. To control inflation from too much demand for goods and services, high tax rates were used to reduce disposable income.
The problem that developed is that the high tax rates on income made leisure inexpensive in terms of lost current earnings from not working, and made current consumption inexpensive in terms of lost future income from not saving and investing. In other words, high tax rates on income made leisure and current consumption cheap in terms of foregone present and future income. Thus, high tax rates on income depressed the supply of labor and capital.

Using the UK’s 98% tax rate on investment income (pre-Thatcher), the Nobel economist Milton Friedman illustrated the problem with this example. You are an Englishman with $100,000. Shall you invest it for future income, or shall you purchase a Rolls Royce and enjoy life? The true price of the Rolls Royce (or Bentley, or Ferrari or Maserati) is not the purchase price. The price of the exotic car is the foregone future income from not investing the $100,000.

Suppose you could earn 10% on the $100,000. That would be $10,000 per year as the cost of purchasing the luxury car. But after tax (98%) the car would only cost $200 per year, a very cheap price.

The same example works for labor and salary income. Because of the high marginal tax rates, many professionals such as medical doctors closed their practices on Fridays and went to the golf course.

By changing the policy mix, that is by tightening monetary policy and reducing marginal tax rates (the tax rate on increases in income), the supply-side economic policy of the Reagan administration caused aggregate supply to increase. Thus output expanded relative to demand, and inflation declined.

This supply-side policy was instrumental as Reagan’s first step toward ending the cold war with the Soviet Union. As long as the US economy was afflicted with stagflation–the simultaneous rise in both inflation and unemployment, the Soviet government saw capitalism failing along with communism. But when Reagan corrected the economic problem, it made the Soviet government unsure that it could withstand an arms race.

Reagan’s next step was to bring the Soviet government to the negotiating table to end the cold war. The cold war was an economic drain on both societies and always had the risk of a miscalculation that would result in nuclear war, wiping out life on earth. Gorbachev, an intelligent person aware of the risk, came to agreement with Reagan.

This was a great accomplishment for the Americans and for the Russians. Friendship and cooperation was now possible.

But it was not to last. Reagan’s successors took advantage of the good will between the countries that Reagan and Gorbachev had created to achieve American hegemony over the world.

While no one was looking, the US lost the war in Afghanistan. The announcement that joint operations involving US/NATO forces and Afghan military and police personnel will cease — “temporarily” — went down with a whimper, not a bang. Since the whole purpose of our continued presence in that country is supposedly to train the forces of Afghan “President” Hamid Karzai, the entire rationale for the war just fell apart, and isn’t it funny — as in funny-weird, rather than funny-ha-ha — that nobody noticed?

Well, not really: we’re in campaign mode, and neither major party presidential candidate is much interested in the subject of a war we’ve been fighting for over a decade, at a cost measured in the trillions (aside from the incalculable human misery). Mitt Romney is mum, and the President has more important matters to consider. Since Romney’s foreign policy team favors a policy rejected by the overwhelming majority of the American people, it’s no wonder their candidate has little to say about it. As for Obama: remember when he and his platoon of “national security Democrats” were telling us Afghanistan was the “good war”? Now that its goodness seems to have dissipated with voters, the administration would rather not remind Americans how much Obama deepened that particular quagmire.

As for the voters themselves: the same people who told pollsters they supported the war in the earlier part of the decade are now telling the same pollsters they want out. The American attention span has been getting shorter over the past decade, and if only we can get them to the point of being bored with the next war before it begins, we’ll be — literally — ahead of the game.

The most significant expert may turn out to be Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, the widely respected honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court and legendary mafia hunter who lost his brother in a revenge attack.

(LONDON) – As the annual 9/11 remembrance draws to a close, the world is as split as ever. Not only on whether the Afghan and Iraq invasions were justified, but between those who accept Washington’s official 9/11 story and those who do not.

Under the mainstream media radar, the number of those who do not is steadily increasing, forming substantial majorities in places like Pakistan and Egypt and significant minorities even in NATO’s heartland countries, France, the UK and the US itself. The issue is not whether, despite his denials, Osama Bin Laden might have wanted to organise the 9/11 attacks but whether Al Qaeda actually had the capability to infiltrate 19 terrorists into the US, including some very well known to the CIA, and the four highly skilled pilots necessary to pull off the spectacular coup. Up to then Al Qaeda’s biggest success was setting off two truck bombs in East Africa. (1)

The stereotype promoted by the corporate media of a 9/11 sceptic, a badly educated redneck watching Fox News in a trailer park, could hardly be further from the truth. The website Patriot’s Question 9/11 lists hundreds of University Professors, over a thousand architects and engineers and hundreds of aviation professionals who have spoken out against the official 9/11 story. (8)

The most significant expert may turn out to be Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, the widely respected honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court and legendary mafia hunter who lost his brother in a revenge attack. Imposimato has written to the Journal of 9/11 Studies announcing his intention to bring a case before the International Criminal Court citing key figures in the US administration for involvement in the execution of the 9/11 attacks. (2)

Imposimato’s take has received indirect support from people close to the heart of Washington’s power elite. Richard Clarke, White House anti-terror czar at the time, has confirmed what researcher Kevin Fenton has established based on a meticulous examination of recently released official reports. Someone at the top of the CIA “made a decision” to stand down the FBI and the CIA, allowing the alleged hijackers a free run in the US when they would otherwise have been arrested and the plot foiled. (9)

Meanwhile the 9/11 truth movement continues with a drip, drip of new research. This year we have seen nothing on the scale of the revelations of iron spheres and uncombusted nanothermite in the dust at Ground Zero, strong indicators that the Twin Towers’ spectacular collapses on live TV were caused by something a lot hotter than diesel fuel fires. But there are significant developments nonetheless.

“9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out” is getting public attention and casting doubt on the scientific validity of the U.S. government’s investigation into the WTC tragedy. PBS is the first major network to air the program.

An earlier report on Digital Journal found that the claims made in the documentary can be verified by reading the government reports themselves. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency charged with the investigation, did not provide any data — no measurements or estimates — of the mass or energy that would be required to bring down the buildings in about ten seconds. Normally a scientific report would present all the data that is used to construct a theory. The omission of data is a red flag to anyone familiar with scientific procedure. It appears that the investigators may have intentionally produced reports that the scientific community would reject.

According to the experts appearing in Explosive Evidence, the scientific community did reject the reports immediately, but it has taken a very long time for this message to reach the public. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the producers of the documentary, have been trying to educate the public for a number of years. The PBS broadcast of their work represents a major step forward for them.

Just days away from the 11th anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy and months away from the U.S. presidential election, a game-changing 9/11 documentary is ranking number three among “most watched” documentaries on PBS and number one among “most shared.” Available for free online August 18th – September 4th, the documentary could have a significant effect on public opinion. [Update: PBS has extended viewing indefinitely.] Both the Republicans and Democrats, as equally staunch defenders of the official story, stand to be affected if the public’s suspicion of government corruption grows deeper.

Dr. Crockett Grabbe has succeeded in getting a paper successfully through peer-review with editors of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics. His paper confronts Bazant who previously published a paper supportive of the “official 9/11 narrative” in the same journal.

It was accepted for publication in October 2012.

Dr. Crockett Grabbe is a physicist who received his PhD from CalTech in 1978. He received a Bachelors of Science with Highest Honors from the University of Texas in 1972.

Dr. Grabbe has also published a notable book providing his scientific analyses of the destruction of the WTC Towers and WTC7. Loaded with photographs, this is his fourth book written for the general public.

“National Swindle on the World Trade Center” challenges the official story of 9/11 with scientific data and analysis. Initial pages are available free here: free here:

Fernando Imposimato, the President of the Italian Supreme Court, has raised the call for a criminal investigation of 9/11, comparing the terror attacks to the declassified “false flag” incidents carried out by the CIA in Italy under Operation Gladio.

“The 9/11 attacks were a global state terror operation permitted by the administration of the USA, which had foreknowledge of the operation yet remained intentionally unresponsive in order to make war against Afghanistan and Iraq,” Imposimato declared in a letter published on Sunday by the Journal of 9/11 Studies.

As a former state prosecutor, Imposimato has extensive experience investigating high-profile crimes, including the kidnapping and assassination of Italian Prime Minster Aldo Moro and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. He also worked on the Anti-Mafia commission as a Senator, giving him a wealth of knowledge on the inner workings of organized crime syndicates.

“Italy too was a victim of the ‘strategia della tensione’ (strategy of tension) of the CIA, enacted in Italy from the time of the Portella della Ginestra massacre in Sicily in 1947 until 1993,” he wrote, recounting the decades of clandestine violence carried out by Western intelligence agencies in the Mediterranean. These terror attacks, conducted under the codename “Gladio”, were condemned by the European Parliament in 1990, but a criminal investigation has yet to be initiated.